Jesus’ authority and power demand the restoration of those who are under the yoke of even the most corrupt culture.

Jesus does not work in terms of the number of days that have passed since death. For how often has Jesus worked in societies where moral corruption and death have reigned for even thousands of years.

We seem to believe such a work is possible only if little time has passed since people departed from God. We think that Jesus can only work in a society which has not become enmeshed in great perversions. Some say He needs a society which still preserves a form of spiritual and moral value if He is to accomplish His work.

To some extent, Lazarus’ body kept the form and cellular structure of a living body on the first and second days after his death. But by the fourth day, Lazarus’ body was at such an extreme stage of corruption that no one could any longer see any signs of the former life in it.

Today most people cannot accept the fact that spiritual life and faith in Jesus can arise in an environment suffering from extreme degrees of spiritual and moral corruption, as extreme as Lazarus’ physical corruption.

Corrupt heritage gives society a corrupt color. It lacks the attractiveness needed to cause anyone to want to return to it. It seems that there is no hope when dealing with such a society, any more than there was hope dealing with the corrupted body of Lazarus.

However, Jesus’ kingdom stretches far enough to demand that those who are subject to the most corrupt heritage be touched by Him. His thoughts are with those who have been buried by their traditions and their deceptive heritages, those who have become subject to corruption and the rule of a corrupt earth, those who have suffered the most severe dissolution because of it.

Jesus places His person and His power on the same earth under which Lazarus was buried, in order to summon His old friend from under its authority. By virtue of Jesus’ creativity, power, and knowledge, He has the prerogative to make His voice heard by every soul, even though the soul’s voice seems hidden from the world of the Spirit and removed from contact with Jesus’ followers.

Jesus is able to do this for us just as surely as He was able to call for Lazarus to “come forth” when the living were about to forget about him.

When called to Bethany where Lazarus lived, Jesus delayed crossing Jordan so a change could take place in the body of Lazarus. Time caused the body to begin to stink as it returned to earth. Jesus told us that He waited for this to happen so He could reveal His role in the creation of man. He wanted people to know that He worked on the earth, raising a living body from the clay at the first creation just like He was going to raise Lazarus.

Jesus’ knew what it was like before history began, and Jesus possessed the creative convictions on which the universe is based.

There is no divergence between the will of Jesus and the object that he has willed and has promised to bring into being. No logical human convictions can stop Jesus, for logic and the convictions of the universe dictate that one cannot project the thought of life into a tomb where a dear friend was buried four days ago. But Jesus is not repeating a human thought, or a thought based on what has happened in past history. Rather, Jesus is relating to experiences that he had before history began, and he has convictions based on his ability to do things never before seen in history. As Jesus prepares to restore a living body beginning from a pile of dust, secrets are revealed concerning the way things began, where those creative convictions were first formed, on the basis of which all things came into being. Who is this One who moved about the universe with creative convictions such as were witnessed in Bethany?

Today, through His word, Jesus establishes the foundation on which our spiritual lives are based, just as in the past, He established the principles and the details upon which existence depends. Because of this, we must see in his thought guarantees that things will happen which have not yet happened in our lives. We must see his opinion concerning us as an assurance that things will be accomplished which nobody has expected. This is because it is he who has laid down the principles on which life and all of creation is based.. He has laid down principles in His Word so we may base our spiritual lives upon them. As we immerse ourselves in His Word, His creative grace and power flow through our lives and usher us into His creative work.

For this reason, we must base our lives on the Word of Jesus, and live our lives with the convictions which we draw from the certainty of His Word. even if we are called to stand with him where he is working, in the most difficult situation, raising out of it something that has never risen before, either in our generation or in any previous generation.

He proceeds to work when He alone has the plan. Remember that He didn’t perform any of the works of creation in consultation with the angels or any other created beings. When He stood in Bethany to bring His beloved friend, Lazarus, back to life from a handful of dust and some dead cells which were in the process of dissolution, Jesus showed that in His creativity He is independent from His creatures. He does not base His creativity on human experience or the growth of an intellectual human conception concerning what we think could happen in our lives. After all, He’s the One who has determined all the creative events that have happened in the past. and for that reason, He moves toward something that no prophet or human being dreamed would ever happen, in order to display that He is the decision maker who was there before the appearance of any creativity in the universe.

Jesus never asks counsel from us with our limited perspective, nor does He work according to our thoughts. He doesn’t follow a program conceived by even the most intelligent and wisest of His creatures. Instead, He brings someone to life who was beloved by the whole community of Bethany including the members of his family, someone who was considered lost forever, and who had become one of the citizens of another world. Jesus did this so that Lazarus might become a living illustration of the kind of work He did when He created mankind in the first place.

He did this without getting the approval of anyone. He didn’t ask if there were any possibility that a living being could be summoned from the remains of a decomposing body. In this way Jesus shows us that all things which exist spring from Him. Life comes from the effusion of His thought. He does not dally with the routine and logic of human life, but is the one who brings into existence the thought on which existence in all its details subsists.

This encourages us to continue trusting in Jesus to work in the lives of our loved ones whom we see in difficult circumstances and whom we consider spiritually and morally lost without hope. Continue to pray to Jesus as the Creator, for He is able to create new life in that dead, hopeless heart. He gives a new heart and a healthy spiritual personality that reflect His creative potency and His compassionate grace.

It’s my hope that you will find comfort in Jesus for your personal life; that you will develop an active prayer life, and that you’ll see Jesus working in the lives of your loved ones.